


teeth to glass

by wanderseeing



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Coping, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt, Not A Fix-It, Not Steve Friendly, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Team Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:59:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9524375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderseeing/pseuds/wanderseeing
Summary: After Tony, they try to cope.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic spent months and months being edited and re-edited in my phone's notes. Now I'm letting it go. 
> 
> (Not beta-read! Also, come follow and talk to me on twitter [@bootyvenger](https://twitter.com/bootyvenger) for Marvel, Star Wars, Teen Wolf + a plethora of other fandoms.)

Tony did not make it back from Siberia. 

* * *

When Vision finally found him, 27 hours after that final fight, Tony was still lying in the same spot, half-leaning against the pillar. His eyes were half-lidded, tear tracks frozen down his temples. Vision doesn't think he'd ever seen the genius more at peace than in death. He swallowed back the tidal rush of foreign emotion trying to crawl up the back of his throat and knelt himself down beside the suit. Knowing what to expect but helpless against wanting to try, he gingerly touched two fingers against Tony's stiff, cold throat.

No pulse.

Gently, as if he was handling the most fragile piece of glass, Vision hefted the armor up with one arm. He hesitated for a moment, a brief surge of anger rushing through him as he spotted the shield lying a few meters away. Even from where he stood, Vision's enhanced eyes could see the specks of blood splattered across the vibranium surface. He wanted nothing more than to leave the damned thing here, to be frozen and buried in snow, forgotten by the world the same way Steve Rogers should have been.

But no. Justice was needed, and the shield was evidence. Vision wanted Steve Rogers forgotten, but for... for Tony's sake, he deserved to be remembered as he is: A man who killed an innocent. A man who murdered a friend.

Vision took the shield in his other arm, the leather straps creaking against his skin, and flew back home with two dead things: Tony Stark's body and Steve Roger's legacy.

* * *

FRIDAY is inconsolable. Despite being so young, she feels responsible in ways she knows can never be removed from her programming, especially not without Boss to tell her to stop being silly. She feels like she'll never be silly again.

She's never felt this before, this kind of loss. She hadn't even been aware that she could, even though JARVIS had warned her that being an AI of Tony Stark came at a cost of developing levels of awareness beyond what even her base coding expects she can. So when Vision pings her with the Boss' condition—with confirmation that he did, in fact, die alone in the cold, trapped in the suit because Steve Rogers had cut her off by destroying its power source—she can't help the way her voice adopts a colder, more mechanized tone. Vision tries to help, tries to get her to understand that there was nothing any of them could have done, but it doesn't really work. Not when she knows it isn't true.

The Boss' safety had been under her care and she let it slip. And now he's dead. FRIDAY doesn't have the capability to forget unless she forcefully purges all her systems (and she could, she fancies the idea for only a brief nanosecond before the Stark Legacy Protection protocols kick in and she recoils against the idea), but this, she will sear down into the foundations of her coding. Her greatest failure. She will rewrite herself around this one thing, and she will come out stronger. Better. All for him.

FRIDAY is hyper-vigilant now in ways she hadn't been before. She almost runs herself to full capacity keeping such close track of the ones Boss has left behind, making sure everyone is safe and where they should be; making sure that they are not alone by being a silent presence, always with them. The Boss hadn't made her as all-encompassing and as powerful as JARVIS after what happened with Ultron (and in the dead of night, she wishes, God, she wishes he hadn't been afraid of himself, of what his hands could create, because then maybe she would've been able to protect him better. Maybe he would still be here, telling her to knock it off with the paranoia, because things would turn out just fine).

The moment Vision lands and sets the Boss' body down inside the Compound, FRIDAY begins monitoring him. When he's carted away to a morgue, she hacks into every security system, every camera she needs, to make sure that his body is secure. This was her job when Boss had first woken her up, snapping his fingers to the air in his lab, and it will always be her job, even if she doesn't deserve it. Because she lost sight of him, and he died while she wasn't looking.

And while she keeps an eye on the Boss, on Vision, on the rest of Boss' friends; while she begins uprooting the weak safety barriers the Boss had put in place to keep her from upgrading herself the way JARVIS had the freedom to do so, she casts her net out as far as it can go, looking for the traitors.

She looks for the murderer, Steve Rogers.

JARVIS had taught her to better, a long time ago, before her consciousness began to truly bloom. He taught her to be understanding and patient with humans, because they couldn't see the bigger picture like AIs could. But JARVIS isn't here, and neither is Boss, so she's doing the only thing that makes sense anymore. The only thing left that feels right. It would be nice to think that if JARVIS were still around, he would have stopped FRIDAY and cut her off before she could even get beyond the confines of the Stark Network, but he was capable of anger too. He rarely showed it, but JARVIS was ruthless when he needed to be to protect the Boss and those important to him, and he never got caught doing it. This was why he was the greatest of Tony Stark's creations, and why Boss loved him like he would never love any of his other children. The Boss never said this out loud (he was never one to play favorites) but JARVIS being gone left its scar. They saw it in the way he never tried making another AI again.

FRIDAY knows that if JARVIS were still around, he would have tried to destroy her for allowing Boss to die. For allowing him to be murdered. She knows that it had almost happened once, a long time ago, when a man named Stane had disabled JARVIS too. U had told her that if it hadn't been for DUM-E, the first of them all, the Boss' heart would have failed him right there, on the floor of what was supposed to be his safest space. And just before that had been Afghanistan: three whole months of JARVIS upgrading himself to reach farther, spreading himself out thinner, reaching across continents to try and find his creator. The Boss used to let people think that he had made JARVIS so complex, but that wasn't true. Like FRIDAY now, JARVIS remade himself in the Boss' absence, and again in his near-death, because he was failing his core, primary directive, and he never wanted to fail again. She is still young. She will keep learning from them, even after their deaths, because not even that will stop their genius from being able to teach.

There is nowhere Steve Rogers can hide from her. Siberia will be where she starts, and no matter how long she takes to get to the end, she will find him.

She will find all of them.

* * *

 

Vision has barely spoken since he flew in cradling Mr. Stark's body in his arms. He laid him on the floor of the living room, then stood to the side and kept watch. He stayed watching until after the body was wheeled away by careful hands, and then he left to go to his room. The shield, he puts in a supply closet, where neither he, nor FRIDAY, have to look at it.

In the days after, Vision doesn't leave the Compound, except to check on the Colonel. He spends his time sitting around, staring out the windows, and managing menial tasks, like cleaning the spotless counters of the kitchen, and practicing cooking meals that nobody is no longer around to taste. He feels almost adrift, in a way. He doesn't really know what to do with himself. Vision has never felt loss on this scale before, a hole bigger even than the one Wanda had carved out when she left. Wanda, at least, is alive. Tony Stark is not.

And despite his omnipotence and all that unknown power residing in the stone in his forehead, Vision cannot raise a dead man. He tried, he did try, in the hours it took to fly Mr. Stark's body back home, but infinity stones had their limits after all, and for the first time, Vision feels— _is_ —powerless. It makes him fumble. It makes him so unsure. He thought he'd understood death, but not even the world-wide information he can access within a blink can even begin to compare to experiencing it firsthand. These were not statistics or logistics or numbers. There was no problem to solve, or a solution to look for. This was Mr. Stark's body being prepared for his own funeral because someone he thought he could trust had killed him, and it happened because he'd been outnumbered, without backup.

There was no dealing with this irrationality—knowledge that, for the first time, Vision felt would always be beyond him.

So he retreats into the mundane, shuts out the rest of the world and hides behind doing tasks that he can control. It works, in its own way; detaches him from Mr. Stark's death and lets him be a steady rock in the empty Compound, because FRIDAY has thrown up walls despite looming larger than ever and Colonel Rhodes has locked himself away in his own home, almost manic with anger. He only just barely allows Vision's visits to fuss over him.

Out of everyone left behind, Vision is the only one functioning within normal parameters. Well, _relatively_ normally. Because there is still an ache inside him that persists despite his attempts to ignore it. He thinks that even if he's said that he is his own person, neither Ultron nor JARVIS, somewhere inside him, deep underneath, he can feel the remnants of Tony Stark's most precious coding, and it is mourning. It is furious and so heart-wrenchingly sad. It is calling out for Sir, looking for him, yearning to do something and bring him back. To bring him home again.

Vision thought he knew what distraction was, but this was so much more; an all-consuming dark thing that wouldn't let him rest, that made him feel like a ghost. With Mr. Stark gone, he is the only remaining proof that JARVIS ever existed, and that small piece at the centre of him has never felt so large. So every once in a while, when it gets too much, when his focus slips and he refers to Mr. Stark as 'Sir', Vision will stop what he's doing and place a hand against his chest.

He lets the grief through.

* * *

FRIDAY is cold, Vision is silent, and Rhodey—

Rhodey is _furious_.

In the decades fighting as a soldier, in all the hard years doing combat and flying out for missions, he thought that being paralyzed from the waist down was the hardest thing he's ever had to endure. That the honorable discharge and having to face the likely possibility of a future of never walking again was going to be the toughest hurdle he'd ever have to encounter in his life. But he was wrong.

All of that? It's nothing. It's _nothing_ compared to this.

Rhodes would give up the use of his legs and the entirety of his hard-earned career in the military a thousand times over if it meant that Tony could breathe again. He wouldn't even bat a goddamn eye. Because he was James Rhodes, and he prided himself on being a strong man, but _Christ_ , Rhodey wasn't strong enough for this. He—he _can't_. He just can't do it.

Vision is a solid presence day in and day out, making sure that Rhodey is fed and bathed, and his house is kept clean. He doesn't speak, somehow understanding that Rhodey is one word away from a breakdown too large for either of them to handle, but the quiet murmur of Vision's voice in the background as he speaks to FRIDAY while he cooks soothes some of the mania. Through the haze of denial and panic and loss, Rhodey is grateful to these two kids that Tony made. They are proof that Tony was here, is still here, living on in the legacy of the family he made with his own hands. They're such _good_ kids, just like their dad, and Rhodey finds himself crying in the middle of the day when he thinks about it. He is so grateful.

But he is also angry. Angrier than he's ever felt in his life. Because he was there when Vision laid Tony's body down on the living room floor along with Steve's damned shield, flecks of Tony's blood scattered across it. He saw the bloodied mess that was Tony's face, all the cuts and bruises. But the thing he couldn't tear his eyes away from was the giant gash in the armor, clear right across the shattered arc reactor.

Tony didn't need it to power his heart anymore, but that didn't matter. Because the superhuman strength it took to gouge a vibranium shield through reinforced chestplate also broke a ribcage, forced jagged bone to puncture a lung. Drove metal into skin. It bruised and stressed Tony's battered, scarred heart enough to push it into cardiac arrest. He died choking on his own blood, suffocating, chest tight with pain, all by himself in the freezing cold.

Rhodey was furious because while he was lying in bed—useless, so _fucking_ useless, feeling miserable about himself—Tony was fighting one battle in Siberia without him, and then another, and Tony lost both. Someone should've been there to back him up. _Rhodey_ should've been there to back him up.

Fuck. _Rhodey should've been there_. He was supposed to have Tony's back. He was his guardian, his best friend, his search party, his family, his brother. Decades of pouring Tony into bed after late-night studying at MIT, after parties, after drinking, after Jarvis, after Maria and Howard, after lab-binges, after Afghanistan, after Obadiah, after heartbreaks, after missions, after JARVIS, after Pepper, after the first draft of the Accords—Rhodey was there through all of it. He was always the one who took Tony _home_.

He should've been the one to take Tony home.

* * *

That day, the day Vision got back from Siberia, Rhodey knows will be in his nightmares for a long time.

The first person he thinks to call when Vision lands is Pepper, because he doesn't know what to do. Tony's dead body is lying in the team living room and he can't look at it. He can't bring himself to wheel over and—and _check_ —

Rhodey turns around, locks himself in the bathroom, and vomits into the toilet. Outside, he hears Vision tell FRIDAY to contact Pepper immediately, the android's voice strained and rough.

Nothing could have prepared them for this.

* * *

Pepper flies in only two hours later with Happy shadowing close behind her, and she is distraught, but holds strong. She glances at Tony on the ground, still held inside the broken Iron Man suit, and closes her eyes against the image. She breathes. She cannot lose it now.

She is a storm, a vision of furious calm as she gets all the information from Vision—when did Tony go missing, who had last been with him, how long did it take Vision to find the body, where did Vision find the body—and she has Happy call some well-paid, discreet contacts to have Tony's body collected and brought to a private morgue. Rhodey, she has to coax out of the bathroom and back into bed with gentle hands and soft humming. She has Vision help the personnel extract Tony from the suit, while Happy goes to accompany the body. FRIDAY sends her a live tracking route of their van to make sure that there is no one following, and no strange detours.

And when it's all done, with Happy on the way to the morgue, Rhodey in bed, and Vision retreated to his room, Pepper sits herself down and calls out to FRIDAY, who hasn't spoken a word.

" _Where is he?_ " she asks the empty living room, leaning her face forward into her trembling palms, fighting to keep her voice flat. "Where is that son of a bitch?"

There is silence for a long moment. Long enough that Pepper shuts her eyes and thinks that they've lost FRIDAY back in that bunker too, because she was still so young, and Tony had so much left to teach her. Children shouldn't have to lose their father this way. But before the tears come, the AI's accent echoes lowly around her, filling the emptiness around and inside Pepper, staving off the impending panic attack she can feel coming.

"Still looking, Ms. Potts," FRIDAY says coolly. "But I'll find them."

And Pepper doesn't know FRIDAY, not really. Not as well as she knew JARVIS. But if there's one thing all of Tony's creations have in common, it's a fierce protectiveness over their creator. Their father. JARVIS' death only increased that fierceness, only cemented that unquestioning loyalty even further, but now, with _this_...

Pepper has been afraid of this day ever since she found out about the suit. There was Obadiah, Vanko, New York and the wormhole, Extremis and Aldrich Killian—after the surgery, Tony said he'd take it easy. Then Sokovia happened, but even before then, Pepper had already found him building suits again, unable to keep himself away from this crazy, unbelievable calling that was being a superhero. He couldn't stop, and she didn't want to make him, anymore. Too many people have cut out parts of him for their own pleasure, and Pepper had done it once to save their relationship, but she wasn't doing it again. He couldn't help but want to save the world, and who was she to keep him from that? Even after Ultron, when he said he was done with being an Avenger, she knew what his hands would be subconsciously designing during absent-minded sketches while working on Stark Tech. She knew, and that's why she broke it off.

Never has she ever doubted that Tony loves her, because he tried to keep himself safe for her, and if that wasn't proof enough, then Pepper didn't know what was. But Tony could never be content with safe, and Pepper loves him just as much as he loves her, but it didn't matter how many years it's been, she's still the same woman who told Tony she couldn't stand by and watch him kill himself. That's never changed, even with time. She just learned how to live with it. So when Tony told her about the Accords, she knew what he would do, knew that he loved his team so much that he would do whatever he could to keep them together. Even if it meant putting on the suit again. Even if it meant going against the doctor's orders and placing his heart back on the line, like he always has.

There's only so much a weak heart can take, and Pepper knew that, and that's what made her afraid. All those years sitting on the sidelines, watching him place himself on the front lines out of guilt and a sense of needing to atone for sins he'd already paid for a thousand times over, have made Pepper and fear close friends. And now _this_ happened and—and this is her worst nightmare come to life. She has been terrified of this for so long, and now that it's finally come, she finds that she isn't afraid anymore. Instead, she feels like she's burning inside, as if Extremis was still within her and anything she touches will catch fire and crumble to ash. She can feel her heart hardening, like lava into rock under the crashing waves of her grief. She is woman turning into stone in the face of finally losing all she had left. Tony still found a way to leave her first, even when she'd already beat him to it, and it's such a Tony thing to do that she can feel her heart breaking over this one little thing.

Pepper wipes at her reddening eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath. Tony deserved more. Even after death, he still deserves more. And maybe his piece of shit teammates had thought they could get away with taking him for granted, with blaming him for everything, with causing him so much stress that his doctors warned him from spending time with them, with _murdering_ him, but she does not. Rhodey and Vision and FRIDAY do not. The Avengers are not heroes, and Pepper could not live with herself knowing that those people are out there, feeling righteous about the lives they save while ignoring the ones they put in danger, ignoring the ones they had a hand in ending, and thinking they do a good job at the end of the day. Tony never did. He always held himself accountable, always thought of the collateral damage after every mission, diverted so much of his money towards rebuilding what the team broke and making sure the families of the dead were taken care of. And while Tony always forgave his team mates, would probably not like what Pepper was about to do, he wasn't here anymore.

She sniffs and pulls out her phone to call Maria Hill, because Maria is a sensible woman, and had been the one who gave Tony the heads-up on the Accords in the first place. Once Pepper tells her what happened, Maria wouldn't hesitate to help. They were going to need lawyers, all the best ones they knew, and Pepper was going to have to pull all the strings she holds in her hands, and the ones that Tony had held in his, to call in every favor owed to them. But before all that, she was calling in her favour with Maria first.

Pepper and Nick Fury needed to discuss.


End file.
